1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an audio signal processor. Embodiments of the invention are concerned with the control of the dynamics of 1-bit audio signals.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is known to convert an analogue signal to a digital form by sampling the analogue signal at at least the Nyquist rate and encoding the amplitudes of the samples by an m bit number. Thus if m=8, the sample is said to be quantized to an accuracy of 8 bits. In general m can be any number of bits equal to or greater than 1.
For the purpose of quantizing to only 1 bit, it is known to provide an analogue to digital converter (ADC) known either as a "Sigma-Delta ADC" or as a "Delta-Sigma ADC". Herein the term "Delta-Sigma" is used. Such an ADC is described in for example "A Simple Approach to Digital Signal Processing" by Craig Marven and Gillian Ewers ISBN 0-904.047-00-8 published 1993 by Texas Instruments.
Referring to FIG. 1 in an example of such an ADC, the difference 1 (Delta) between an analogue input signal and the integral 2 (Sigma) of the 1-bit output signal is fed to a 1-bit quantizer 3. The output signal comprises bits of logical value 0 and 1 but representing actual values of -1 and +1 respectively. The integrator 3 accumulates the 1-bit outputs so that value stored in it tends to follow the value of the analog signal. The quantizer 3 increases (+1) or reduces (-1) the accumulated value by 1-bit as each bit is produced. The ADC requires a very high sampling rate to allow the production of an output bit stream the accumulated value of which follows the analogue signal.
The term "1-bit" signal as used in the following description and in the claims means a signal quantized to an accuracy of 1 digital bit such as is produced by a Delta-Sigma ADC.
It is also known that when an audio signal is quantized to 1-bit the audio information is obscured by the quantization noise to an unacceptable extent and it is imperative that the quantisation noise is suitably shaped. Noise shaping is shown diagrammatically in FIG. 2 where 21 denotes the noise shaping and 22 denotes the audio signal.
It is also known to control the dynamics of an audio signal. Control of dynamics includes the control of the dynamic range of the signal by:
a) limitation of the dynamic range PA1 b) dynamic signal compression and PA1 c) dynamic signal expansion.
Compression and expansion involve multiplying the signal by a gain factor dependent on the signal magnitude.
The present invention seeks to apply dynamics control to 1-bit audio signals.